Today we are going to talk about Article 18 which addresses another dimension of discipleship, Christian Spirituality.
If you look up the definition of Spirituality you will get something like this “the quality of being concerned with religion or the human spirit”. As you can see, this term spirituality is actually an extremely general and broad term that means very little. Christian spirituality on the other hand means something very specific and is spelt out well in Article 18. Article 18 opens with these words, “We believe that to be a disciple of Jesus is to know life in the Spirit”. Spirit is the capital S Spirit which means the Holy Spirit. In other words, it is saying, we believe that to be a disciple of Jesus is to know life in the Holy Spirit”.
Now, to summarize Article 18’s take on “life in the Spirit”, in one sentence, I would say, “to know life in the Spirit of God is to have an extraordinary relationship with the Savior of the world”. While we have focused the meaning of the word “spirituality” considerably by this point, we are still speaking in broad terms here. To get us even more focused, I will address just two aspects of a disciple’s relationship with their Savior that Article 18 brings to our attention.
Today we are going to dwell a little deeper into what it means for individuals within the church to give the outside world a glimpse of what it is like to be under the reign of Christ. This is the focus of Article 171. Now article 17 states that “conformity to Christ includes non-conformity to the world”. This statement implies that you cannot have dual citizenship between Christ’s kingdom and the kingdom of this world which is ruled in fact by Satan. Take your pick, it is one or the other. There is no fence-sitting either. So what does it look like when you choose to be in Christ’s kingdom? Today I will present to you three sets of choices addressed in Article 17 involved in choosing Christ over the world.
The Mennonite church depends only on the power of the Holy Spirit. It receives into its membership those who have voluntarily received the saving power of Christ. The Mennonite church also encourages regular attendance to reaffirm one’s identity in Christ, to express one’s highest loyalty to Christ and to seek the will of Christ for one’s life. Today I am going to be talking about Article 10, and this time I mean it Article 10 refers to the mission of the church and that is what we are going to focus on.
Today I am going to start a sermon series on the Confessions of the Mennonite Church. We live in a time when many people don’t want to be associated with a denomination. Sometimes it is because the presence of different denominations look like unnecessary divisions created in the larger faith community. The Mennonite Church through its unique faith history, being birthed out of extreme persecution has picked up on certain aspects of the kingdom of God particularly well. This is what I want to present to you in this sermon series on the Mennonite Confession of faith.
Life is a balancing act. We have to constantly balance between our work and home lives, balance between attending to things that are important versus things that are urgent, between spending and saving. But have you every wondered about balancing the old and the new? Dwelling on the past versus looking to the future? Well, focusing on the old helps us learn from past mistakes and build old skills, deepen old friendships. It is a reminder of where we came from. Focusing on the new helps keep life fresh and exiting as well as helping expand our horizons and grow in new ways. In the Bible we have versus that ask us both to remember what God has done in the past but also to journey with God into the new. God wants us to cherish the lessons from the past but also be sensitive to the new things that God is doing in our midst. Today we stand at the beginning of not just a new Year but a new decade as well. So I think this is a good time to think about the new. Entering the New Year is like reached the shore of a new land waiting to be explored.
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